


where sandstone and birch meet

by citrusyuz



Series: incomplete god. [1]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Angst, Found Family, Immortality, Spirits, ill add more if i can think of them, medusa!changbin, murder/?/, nymph!seungmin, other members to be revealed later in the series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:14:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25893469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrusyuz/pseuds/citrusyuz
Summary: the pixies cry as his blood seeps through wooden floor boards.
Series: incomplete god. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1879009
Kudos: 4





	where sandstone and birch meet

**Author's Note:**

> 9/22/2020 EDIT: removed a character

Seungmin wakes to the chirping of early morning birds, his window open to the world. 

The sun hasn't yet risen over the horizon, but the skies take on a purplish hue while a chilly early morning breeze greets him through the window. Seungmin whispers a quiet good morning back, running a hand through the curtain that quakes next to his bedside.

The fairies are up early today. It’s quite nice, particularly with how few of them there are now. He slides out of bed, Seungmin’s bare feet grazing over the cold floorboards that cause small goosebumps to sprout up his legs. In moments like these, he misses the silky grasses and plush moss-- even in the winter, the earth was always warmer than chopped wood.

Seungmin tugs his thick down blanket tighter around his frame, as if it could protect him from the empty feeling that follows nostalgic memories.

The weather has gotten chilly recently, and soon, Seungmin will have to shut the windows before the sun sets across the horizon. Right now however, he’s content with the uncomfortably frigid floors if it means he can awaken to the tiny murmurings of sprites and a far less anxious roommate.

Changbin, Seungmin’s roommate of eight years and counting, sleeps soundly atop a nest of clothes-- most of which, Seungmin has noticed, had been stolen from him or their other housemate, Chris. 

Seungmin has long since learned not to comment on the others’ eccentric behaviors. Changbin tends to be the most sensitive of the nine that reside in the household and Seungmin would rather not poke and prod at the other’s healing wounds. 

Seungmin turns away from the piles of unfolded laundry and quietly pads across his shared bedroom, taking care to make as little noise as possible, counting each step he takes. 

There are few things worse than waking Changbin at these hours, more notably during the autumns and coming winters when Medusa like Changbin feel their eyelids become heavy with sleep and their hearts begin to slow with the dwelling of temperatures. Chris likes to say that it’s great that Seungmin is ‘so Seungmin-y all the time’ around Changbin and that it means that Seungmin ‘makes a great roommate’ for Changbin-- especially because Seungmin ‘so strongly dislikes over emotional beings’ like Changbin that ‘he’d do everything in his power’ to keep everyone, namely Changbin, from ‘falling into disarray.’ Seungmin would beg to differ and bring up that incident where Changbin spilled the brown sugar on the kitchen floor, but it doesn’t matter because Chris never listens to what Seungmin says anyways. 

Seungmin prefers to file away the moments when Changbin upsets, shoving them in the deepest parts of his brain where he’d, hopefully, never think of them again. It’s better that way; then he never has to think about the way Changbin’s eyes flash with something dark and pained every time red bloodstained lines are crossed.

All nine of them have their moments, but Chris says that Seungmin ‘tends to handle the fallouts the worst’ because as much as Seungmin ‘pretends to not care’ Seungmin ‘tends to be more sensitive than Changbin’. Seungmin will then disagree because Changbin cries every time he has to leave the house unlike Seungmin who actually could care less about his own destination as long as a pixie is allowed to tag along. (Though, it’s not as if Chris or Changbin, or any of their other roommates would know).

Chris also says that Seungmin is ‘ _afraid_ of making everyone upset’ because of ‘ _trauma’_ from previous death encounters with humans, to which Seungmin deduces that Chris is an idiot who doesn’t know what he’s doing despite his millennias of living. Not to mention the fact that Seungmin hasn’t died nearly as many times as everyone else-- let alone in the presence of a human-- so it’s impossible for him to have any trauma from such experiences.

Seungmin sticks out his lower lip at that thought, soothing the mild bout of irritation that bubbles in his gut with a sharp breath. 

Instead of kicking Changbin’s mess of a cot like he wants to, Seungmin directs his thoughts elsewhere and, in a fury of incredible self-control, he gently pushes through the curtains that haphazardly covers the archway Changbin and Chris like to call a door. 

Chris had said he would replace the broken door nearly six years ago, but the room's appearance has yet to be restored. Seungmin's come to realize, however, that he doesn't really mind the door (or the lack of one thereof) because Changbin dislikes the smell of plants and Seungmin dislikes being separated from the sprouts. 

The curtain, in it’s own kind of way, was-- _is_ a compromise: Seungmin can still hear the whispers and mumble jumbles of complaining roots while Changbin doesn't have to deal with the constant fear of stepping on Seungmin's friends (which, in Seungmin's rightful option, is a valid fear). 

Now that he’s deemed himself a far enough distance from Changbin’s over-sensitive ears, Seungmin prods down the hallway. With every step he makes, the gentle smacking of his feet against aged wood echoes through the emptiness of the house.

In the time that Seungmin’s lived in the humble abode that he and the eight of his roommates call home, he's come to find that it's foundations have always been built on _inevitable compromise._ When he’d first arrived in his threadbare rags and muddied feet, the house had been fresh, made of pearlescent white sandstones and birch wood planks. 

Back then, there had been no tall apartment buildings to block the sunlight from the west, nor were there any loud street noises to leave Hyunjin and Changbin quaking in their skins. 

Back then, there was only forest and the spirits that lived underneath stones and between tree branches. 

Seungmin had been raised by those spirits, born to them too-- a nymph to be more specific-- but he outgrew his roots and watched his caretakers wither with age. 

Seungmin had been old then, when he stumbled across the white house surrounded by pretty gardens and a few rice patties, but not nearly old enough to fully understand his place in the world. The Seungmin from that time had little fear. He walked with a confident step and knew the sprawling forests like the back of his hands. 

He had already known then that the fairies had tried to keep him away, tried to distract him from that particular part of the forest with small inconveniences and tasks. And Seungmin let them do exactly that, following their whims for six seasons. 

But Seungmin wasn't a fool. 

Soon enough, he’d grown tired of playing and snuck his way through the forest, climbed over stone, crawled underneath the underbrush and, inevitably, found the house. 

He grew up sheltered from the world by lovely vines that sang lullabies and soft grass that caressed his skin comfortingly, but, when he found himself faced with his first real human encounter, his world shifted.

At first, he had hid with his friends-- the little pixies that accompanied him atop the branches-- watching the strange beings meander about the clearing.

It had been a strange experience then. He’d watch as things-- the ones that looked so similar to his reflection-- purposefully walked about. They would go about tasks so seriously; tasks the Seungmin from then could have never understood. 

Spirits never rushed. Mother was slow in her days and seasons, never directing them to finish work so hastily. The other sprites had told Seungmin then that life was to be lived freely and that’s what he firmly believed then.

Those beings were not free, nor did they seem to be living at all.

When night fell, they would hide in the strange thing that Seungmin assumed was a den. They’d never come back out till the sun peeked over the mountains. 

Even the animals that lived in the forests came out to play with the star goblins from time to time. 

Seungmin had been perplexed.

And, again, the Seungmin from then had been confident in everything he did. 

So, when the eighteenth dusk fell, he planned a scheme, sneaking into the fortress of wood and sandstone. He scaled the sides like he scaled the mountains, ignoring the fearful chattering of pixies in his ears. 

Seungmin had been curious then, of the beings that existed in the den. 

He realizes now that he should have been more careful, but the Seungmin from that time had believed that all beings respected the forest. Seungmin learned soon enough that these beings, these humans, were the furthest beings from perfection. He learned that they loved nothing nor respected anything but themselves.

Seungmin had learned then, after he’d made it to one of those strange unused holes in the walls of the den. Seungmin had crawled in, meaning to pause and examine the strange clear wall of ice that had been neatly propped above, but the sound of a gasp distracts him.

Seungmin turned from his perch on the ledge, locking eyes with the strange being.

The being makes an unintelligible noise, loud and strained like a wounded deer. 

The pixies were loud in Seungmin’s ears then, screaming, crying, begging him to turn away. 

Seungmin ignored the pixies, bounding from hole, towards the being, eyes wide with curiosity. Pixies are dramatic and Seungmin has met enough creatures in his thousands of seasons to know there had been nothing to fear then...

And then, Seungmin found himself against wooden planks, no longer upright, breathing in the scent of birch and dust, the red of his blood spilling through the cracks, a familiar pain rising in his chest.

He remembered then, the time he fell from a cliff side and landed on the stones that the pixies had told him to be wary of. He remembered how his head exploded with pain against sharp rocks and the way red seemed to fill the corners of his eyes.

Seungmin fell asleep that time before, as he did then, a dark fog clouding the corners of his mind. 

The last thing he thinks about is the thing that stared at him, it’s own eyes wide, as if Seungmin was the dangerous one. As if the Seungmin from that time had been the one to stab the thing in the chest with the sharpened stone. As if Seungmin hadn’t felt a twinge in the chasm that held his heart for the first time, as something dark and something alarming filled him. As if this feeling hadn’t make him feel like running, escaping, and returning _home_ to the forest where pain had only been caused by himself and not another.

Seungmin died there, for the second time in his life, the pixies unseen by untrained eyes wailing above him. He couldn’t hear them then, over the rushing of blood and consuming thoughts; he couldn’t hear the being that murdered him either and the way that it’s legs collapsed too, against wooden planks, quivering and sobbing like an abandoned chick. 

Seungmin hadn’t been alone then, but he’d felt like the only being in the world as everything he’d ever known, twisted and flipped underneath his feet. 

And then he awoke again, to seven pairs of eyes belonging to beings who all shared striking resemblances to his own reflection. He’d felt fear then, nearly drowned in it after the pixies that he’d grown up with had run away when he’d bled out against pale floors stained red. 

Seungming gave up counting the seasons since he arrived long ago; it matters much less to him now. 

He’s existed in this home for long enough that he doesn’t need to prove his worth to any of the other eight failed gods (whether through knowledge or through skills or through age.) 

For Seungmin, his place in the birch wood and sandstone has already been carved through the plants that litter nearly every corner and available surface in the house, to the small little corner of the living room set aside specifically for him, the pillow Chris had sewn nearly a century earlier for him, and the fairies who sleep in the corners and cracks of the old house. 

It may not seem like much from the outside, but for, Seungmin, who’s watched his forest trampled and destroyed by humans, the house of birch and stone was his haven-- his world-- and the one place where he’s hidden what’s left of an old home in the pots and plants. 

It’s been a very long time since those days, when the Seungmin from _then_ existed and he has long since adjusted to fit into the world. Now, when he finds himself staring into those faces, the one of the being who killed him, _Jisung_ , and the six other beings that awoke him, _Changbin, Hyunjin, Felix, Minho, Chris, Jeongin_ , he feels something he doesn’t quite know how to put into words. 

The forest had been his first home, but Seungmin’s second grave was where he found the truth; _his truth_. The forest loved him, coddled him, but knew nothing about the human born to a nymph. 

It was in the walls of a _den_ that Seungmin learned of the gods, the humans, the spirits, and the gods who were born incomplete. It was in these walls that Seungmin learned of his origins and _their origins_. It was in these walls that Seungmin found solidarity in eight other beings who were not human but felt just as broken, failed, and imperfect as humans.

Chris says that what he feels is ‘ _love_ ’ but Seungmin doesn’t think the word fully explain the feelings that the whitewashed walls and worn floors invoke.

Seungmin draws himself from his thoughts when he reaches the open living space on the first floor. In the furthest corner of the area sectioned off by ugly green couches, is his spot and he makes his way there, the bare of his feet grazing icy floor boards that are in dire need of replacement.

The pixies whisper to him, a couple of them snuggling into his short brown hairs. 

He murmurs something back to them-- in a language only meant for spirits-- and then sinks down upon the raggedy pillow thoughtfully placed between an assortment of pots where more than two dozen plants have wound their ways into one another. 

Seungmin has, in his millenniums of life, outgrown his childhood, his first home, and his world, but what he’s found _here_ , even through constant turmoil, is _untouchable_. The nine of them in this house are linked by a bond deeper than blood, trapped in a loop that only leads them back to this house-- the one made of white birch wood and pearlescent sandstone. 

**Author's Note:**

> um,, this is barely edited and wrote it in a two day frenzy-- its actually something i've been thinking of for a good three months or so tho,,, so maybe it'll be a start to a real story??
> 
> sorry if it's a bit confusing! theres a lot about the universe not explained yet


End file.
